‘A Child of this Century’: Launching Abdellatif Laâbi’s Dual-language Chapbook

On Monday, Feb. 18, author Adbellatif Laâbi and translator André Naffis-Sahely launched the dual-language chapbook Poems/Poèmes at Free Word. French-English translator Roland Glasser was there.

By Roland Glasser

‘I am the poem tree. They have tried to manipulate me, but their efforts came to naught; I’m intractable, the master of my own mutations’^[1]

Abdellatif Laâbi is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, yet is considered by many to be not only Morocco’s foremost contemporary poet, but one of the most important poets writing today. Just three years ago, he was awarded the Goncourt Prize for Poetry, France’s highest literary award. When Lawrence Ferlinghetti visited Paul Bowles in Morocco in search of poetry talent for his City Lights press and bookshop, the expatriate composer, author, translator and long-time Tangier resident told him to look up Abdellatif Laâbi.

Now, English readers can get a mouth-watering taste of his poetry in a new dual-language chapbook published by the Poetry Translation Centre.

#

The atmosphere is heavy in the auditorium, gloomy even despite the bright lighting. Must be the weather. It’s barely above zero outside. The audience file in, cheeks red from the cold.

Abdellatif Laâbi sits patiently, dignified, his fine silvery grey moustache gently bristling, eyes a-twinkle behind the small round wire-frame spectacles.

We begin.

André Naffis-Sahely, translator of the poems in this chapbook, leans forward to speak, his face a blend of Mediterranean and Persian origins, dark hair swept back behind one ear. He talks about the way so many poets have been jailed in the 20^th century, from Osip Mandelstam in pre-war Stalinist Russia to Ivan Martin Jirous in communist Czechoslovakia 40 years later.

Abdellatif Laâbi found himself on this long dark list of glorious names for most of the 1970s.

‘I was in the cave
where convicts read in the dark
and painted the bestiary of the future on the walls’[2]

The translator reads the first poem in English, followed by the poet in French, a pas de deux they will gently dance for the rest of the evening.

Abdellatif Laâbi has a wonderful low voice, sonorous, light, delicately posed, with just an edgy hint of a Maghreb accent. It’s a real joy to hear a poet read their own work, and I muse on how lucky I am to understand both the original and translated versions perfectly. It’s almost like watching one of those split screen films where the same scene is played out simultaneously from different angles.

The innocuous rumble of a passing Tube train is amplified by microphone feedback into something more ominous as André Naffis-Sahely reads “The Earth Opens and Welcomes You,” a poem written on the day of the burial of Tahar Djaout, an Algerian writer killed by fanatics in Algiers in 1993:

‘Sleep well my friend
Sleep the sleep of the righteous
Rest well
even from your dreams
Let us shoulder the burden a little’[3]

Next, an interloper in the form of “The Word Gulag,” a poem that although it doesn’t appear in this chapbook, is a product of the marvellous initiative behind it. I am talking about the fortnightly Poetry Translation Workshops started by the dynamic poet Sarah Maguire ten years ago. I have participated in several of these intimate gatherings, at which a small group of more or less multilingual scribblers bash a literal translation into pretty decent English shape over tea and biscuits, before Sarah takes it home for a final buff and polish. My first foray just happened to be one focusing on Abdellatif Laâbi’s work, with literals courtesy of André Naffis-Sahely, so I was pleased to hear him recite a text that I, in some small way, had a hand in shaping:

‘The words file one by one out of a little door and stand in front of us on the other side of the wire. Pale. Trembling. Haggard. Shattered.’^[4]

In the short Q&A that follows, Abdellatif Laâbi is asked why he writes in French, a colonial language.

His reply is discreetly eloquent:

“Every mother tongue is imposed, just like every colonial language, so why not write in whatever language you wish? […] It’s no bad thing to find yourself between two or three cultures. Count yourself fortunate to be an agent of dialogue between these cultures.”^[5]

The poet smiles, folds his spectacles back into their little case, and leans back in his chair as we applaud.

‘I am the poem tree. I chuckle at all things ephemeral and eternal.
I am alive.’[6]